Catching up with Consul General: Markku Piri on New York in the 80s and returning to nature
This month, Consul General Mika Koskinen took a trip down memory lane with Markku Piri, one of Finland's most redeemed multidisciplinary designers, whose long, illustrious career has just been captured in an autobiographical book.
Mika Koskinen: Your autobiography, ”MuodotOn Elämä”, has been recently published in Finland. Tell us a little bit about this book and its creation process.
Markku Piri: About four years ago, I wrote a few short stories involving some of the important people and chains of events in my life. I sent them to a couple of friends in the literary field, got enthusiastic comments about the style of the narrative and the emerging timeline, and was encouraged to continue. Due to a treatment error in 2017, I got fierce hospital-acquired pneumonia, which almost took my life, causing severe sequelae. When I survived the ordeals, I said that if I was going to write those memoirs, now is the time. The work was both a pleasure, therapy, and, yes, a couple of years of work. Just editing tens of thousands of photos took four months. - I'm very proud that the text convinced a leading Finnish publishing company, Siltala, and a deal was quickly done.
The book was designed in collaboration with a fantastic graphic designer I've worked with since the mid-80's, Pentti Järvinen; we know and trust each other well. We met live only once, the last day of February, before I had to withdraw into the lockdown. The design process was an ideal e-job for the corona times. I appreciate that my publisher allowed the whole book to be printed in full color and on quality paper, so the illustrations follow and resonate directly with the text.
My life and career are inseparable, and the style and approach is very open on both. I have photographic, three-dimensional visual memory, and readers have told me that the text flows vividly like a film. Intertwining shorter and longer stories start to build images of a curving life.
MK: As an artist, you have always been versatile, and your achievements have been recognized across many cultural fields. From your perspective, what would be your main professional accomplishments?
MP: Several projects, various times. The 1983-1991 collaboration with Finlayson, a home textiles giant and at that time the largest manufacturer in the Nordic countries, was an enormous success for a young designer eager to show his skills. Our products were noticed and sold in many markets, and we even licensed in Japan where I got to travel twice a year for seven years.
Designing sets and costumes in 1991 for the Kaija Saariaho-Carolyn Carlson dance theater project "Maa" for the Finnish National Ballet was a highlight. The production was also invited to Amsterdam and Rome, where the reviews referred to my stage design as masterpieces of modern art.
A favorite multicultural project was buying and restoring to its former glory the 1826 Old Vicarage of Huittinen, my mother's birth town. A-level exhibitions and recitals were arranged, Karita Mattila gave the Finnish premiere of Saariaho's song cycle for her in our program. The location, however, was too remote for full-year programming, so I had to eventually sell the place in 2012.
The cherry on top is the 2017-18 exhibition tour in Italy, by invitation to three major museums: Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, Museo Carlo Bilotti - under Villa Borghese - in Rome, and as the first artist from Finland ever, at the legendary Murano Glass Museum. I collaborated with four major Murano glass masters, Including Pino Signoretto, and the Finnish Lasismi co-operative, to create 90 new works in glass. The exhibition concept included serigraphy prints, paintings, and new interior textiles designed for the Finnish Eurokangas company. It was fantastic to plan and build the exhibition dialogue with these characterful spaces. A total of 70 000 visitors saw the exhibitions and 90 articles were published in Italy within a span of 10 months.
MK: I know that New York is an important city for you, as you have been living and working here for an extended period. What are some of your most memorable experiences here, and what does New York mean to you?
MP: I wouldn't be the person or the designer I am without my New York experiences. As an exchange student going to a Florida high school, my art instructors saw my potential. I applied for and received a scholarship to attend the Foundation program of Parsons School of Design in the summer of 1973. A great learning experience that sealed my future in design. I returned to New York for a decade, starting in 1981, after a couple of years as a designer for Marimekko in Finland. I'm grateful for my university education in design in Finland, but New York really taught me that good design and good taste come in many shapes and ways; a truly eclectic city of culture. I used to live in the West Village and Soho, and returning to those streets always means returning home.
MK: We have all encountered several challenges and uncertainties with the arrival of the pandemic. However, could you name some positive consequences this time has brought to you personally?
MP: This pandemic can really be taken as a last "emergency call" related to the human existence on earth. What are the terms of survival, how out-of-tune, or how in-tune with nature can we be or become? I have been in strict personal lockdown for nearly nine months now. In mid-May, I moved with my partner to our summer house in the Northern Savo province. Our closest neighbors were the swans, ducks, and cranes of the near-by lake and fields. Every day brought new scents, colors, and sounds, and it was profoundly fulfilling to experience the budding spring turn into summer, then gradually to fall. I felt closest to nature since my days as a boy. The summer was sunny, longer than ever, and the garden blossomed and bore fruit like never before.
This pandemic can really be taken as a last "emergency call" related to the human existence on earth. What are the terms of survival, how out-of-tune, or how in-tune with nature can we be or become?
MK: Throughout your whole career, you have always been active and engaged. Can you tell us a little bit about what the future holds for you?
MP: I'm in the process of doing final touches on designs of interior textiles commissioned by the village of my childhood and youth, Ruovesi. This region has amazing natural beauty - a source for my landscape designs - which is why the legendary Golden Age painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela built his wilderness studio and home there. So did a more contemporary Elga Sesemann, who was my first mentor, and who wonderfully is awarded with a posthumous retrospective at Ateneum, the Finnish national gallery, in 2021.
My current home town, Hämeenlinna, the birth city of Sibelius, has a magical luxury hotel, Vanajanlinna, formerly a private hunting lodge, that celebrates one hundred years in 2024. We have a plan to develop the hotel brand, research, and make a new documentary film about its colorful history.
I am currently working on a new series of glassworks and paintings for a show in Finland in 2021/22, and hope to extend a version of this to travel out of Finland as well.
MK: What would be your Christmas wish this year?
MP: Something really simple and basic, LOL: the only right result in the USA presidential election, and trustworthy vaccine and cures against covid; all benefitting the globe.
Read more about Piri and browse his works on his website(Link to another website.).
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